Whippoorwills at the Crossing
by Hikari no Chibi
Summary: Ivelle served with a twist - a story of love, loss, and love again, served with a side of bird song, transformation and death. This one gets a little dreamy and a lot plotty, not the usual cannibal smut; written from a prompt given at the 6 Month RumBelle Anniversary .


**Acheron**

Coming home was a mistake. Coming home was sorrow, torment and pain.

Twenty lashes in the morning, as the night's bird-song began to fade. They bartered her pain for hours in the afternoon – tempting her with the same charade. Confess the monster's secrets and we will spare you in this morning. Confess you are the devil's own whore and we will spare you in this morning. Confess you traded your virtue for freedom and we will spare you this morning.

The words ran together, a gush of wind around her head. They meant nothing, and they could not tempt her to speak. The word of a liar was worth less than nothing. Belle knew, without being told, that nothing she ever told them would spare her the next morning. Nothing would ever be enough to convince them of her innocence. It was twenty lashes every morning, atop her freshly scourged back and legs that still stung from the astringents and vinegar sponged into the wounds at midday by what passed for a lady's maid.

She, at least, knew the source of her pain: short leather thongs, studded with sharpened pieces of shrapnel, wound up into a thick, firm handle – a handle which never left the sweaty palm of the Chief Cleric during her never-ending interrogations. They would offer her anything – freedom, food, congress with the beast… the images and scenes these men of the cloth described were enough to bring a blush to her face, yet they called her deranged.

Anything at all was hers to take, if she'd confess the truth of her transgressions. The irony, Belle realized in her more lucid moments, was that she had confessed to them already – she confessed every day: nothing. Nothing at all happened between herself and Rumpelstiltskin, he'd sent her away a second time before they could… And that kiss was hers. Her one perfect thing: irrevocable proof that another living creature loved with every fiber of his being. They could have anything but that, and so she gave them nothing.

The Clerics smelled of incense, sweat and linen, and the entire tower stank of sickness and infection. On the days when she gave them more puss than blood and screams, they offered her a reprieve. Healers. Healers in black frocks and covered faces, dreading to be seen. The Clergy should take their cues from the Healers; if they would not dare to look upon a thing, knowing that the thing could look back at them from the very flagstone of the grave, the Clerics should also know to leave it be. Instead, they fell upon her like dogs fell upon their feed.

One lashing.

Confess to us how you were freed….

The subtle caress of cold metal and cured hide along her thigh.

It could all end tomorrow morning.

The loss of sensation, the silence of all but heavy breathing, then a crack like thunder and her own hoarse scream.

Two lashings.

Confess to us how you fucked the beast…

At first, they dotted her with bruises and speckled rosebuds of blood. Belle did not know she bled, could no longer differentiate the severity of her pains, until the sharp pinch of peeling off her chemise for the daily bath in salted water, when it stuck at certain spots and finally came away with bits of her flesh and scabs attached. The peeling of sores hurt almost as much as the scourging, the salt-water burned out some of the rot with a bone-crushing sting, but none could touch the scourge for depth and horror of pain.

The Night was Belle's favorite time.

From the tower, her screams flowed like rivers out the window and into the sky where they drifted away, disjointed, and turned to airy nothings long before the townsfolk could hear more than a subtle sigh. The crack of the whips flew farther, she knew, but those could not reach the ground. Thunder. Distant rain. The lies those below told themselves must sound convincing, or else… or else she was a fool for ever thinking that these people had been worth saving.

At dusk, only one shrill, haunting sound drifted into her window. It kept her awake, more infuriating than exhaustion, suffering or grief. Belle thought perhaps the Clerics had sent it to drive her insane. Always the same chirping melody, always repeated, always all night. Every time it chirped, she repeated his name; turn-about was fair play. Then it faded in the sunlight, an the cycle would begin again.

Confess, and we'll spare you this morning…

Even the Clerics were blossoming; their pristine white robes bore the spatter of continued mutilation and gore spat into the air by the many-tailed beast. Leather and shrapnel. Confess and that you're in league with the Dark One and we'll spare you in the morning.

Always the Dark One, never Rumpelstiltskin. They knew to fear his name, could imagine his rage at the state of his plaything. They didn't know she whispered his name through the nights, a litany of pain. Always the same conversation: whip-poor-will sang the night-bird, Rumpelstiltskin Belle begged. A single-word prayer they both loosed into the blackness, unanswered every night.

He never came. They might sing his name and dance on her grave, if they liked; Rumpelstiltskin wanted nothing to do with her any more. Was it all for naught? Everything? Loving, losing, becoming lost?

But the Clerics couldn't hold her for eternity. Something, some day, would change. Her father would grow old and die – they would lose interest if they weren't being paid. She would fall to her knees, and fail to rise – they could strip the flesh from her bones and crush them to dust, but she wouldn't mind. She would grow wings and learn to fly – they couldn't follow her in the skies. When that day came… when it did, these so-called Devils that she consorted with better be ready. She had a long line of evils to repay, the ledger kept in fresh tallies on every inch of her flesh.

Slowly the buds blooming across her body grew from speckled patches at the tips of red vines into blossoms the size of tea cups. Then, as new patches of garden were over-turned the next day, the prized specimens turned brown and wilted on the vine. Her bruises and sores opened, then sealed themselves away, only to be re-opened under the same twenty lashes the following day. For days upon days, nothing ever changed. When she was lucky, she suffered all twenty lashes within a three or four hour time-frame. When she was very unlucky, she passed out and had to be revived between questions. Sometimes they ran late into the day.

Lash one: confess the duration of your trysts. These were nothing. The crack of metal on air, an exaggerated sense of falling made dramatic by the showmanship of a professional. He may as well have dropped a pebble from a high place.

Lash three, lash four… Rumpelstiltskin, I love you. When are you coming? She'd like to dream of him, some night, if the little bird would ever stop its chirping.

Lash seven, lash eight… Rumpelstiltskin, I know you love me. The kiss told me everything, but you'll see – I'm telling them nothing. Please. Please. Please trust me.

Lash thirteen, lash fourteen… Don't pass out. Don't faint. When all you have is bravery, but all you need is faith…

He wasn't coming.

Lash twenty. He wasn't coming tonight. Nor the next night.

When they left her in a heap on her hay-stuffed mattress, the second round of whipping sunk in its teeth and refused to let go. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will. Whip-or-will. Whip-or-will. Whip or Will?

Will. Will power. Will live, will survive, will not die. Belle spoke to it candidly after the first fortnight. Whip or Will? Will. Whip or Will? Will. Her own haunting battle cry. The Clerics had over-estimated the use of their latest torture device, and now the bird was her ally. It was alright. She wasn't alone any more. If she wasn't alone, she didn't have to be afraid of anything.

Lash one, the vociferous cracking. Whip or Will? Will. Not answering.

Lash seventeen, the garden blooming. Whip or Will? Will. Will live, will escape, will love him. Always will.

Not long after her revelation, the Clerics graduated to flaying. They peeled her resolve away in long, ruby stripes, cauterized it, and cut again. Clippings of a careful gardener keen on seedlings, to sow his prize specimen world-wide; a master-landscaper who traded in flesh instead of soil.

Whip or Will? Whip or Will… Whip, or will…. Whip, or will you tell them everything? Make up a lie, they like lies. Whip, or will you break today?

Belle couldn't face the knife for a fifth consecutive day, could feel the strength leaving her legs. She heard her friend calling, the only friendly voice she ever heard, and decided to fly.

The walk to the window and careful wiggling of its latch was almost beyond her strength and dexterity, had she waited another day she could not have made the small, trying journey. Was this to be her great traveling, then? A walk across the room: with Rum in the war room, with the whip-poor-will crying in the tower… A small upgrade from a walk down the aisle, decidedly.

When she took to the air, the sharp ache in her arms and legs faded, everything faded. She was weightless and serene, half mad with fever and grief. Would she grow wings? A pair of mottled-brown and speckled things, for she was no angel, but not the leathery black of the Dark One's play-thing. She was not that person either. Belle was only herself. Herself, falling, to the accompaniment of the nocturnal whippoorwill.

It was the last thing she saw before hitting the ground – a flustered bird, scrambling to cover its faintly scratched-out nest on the ground. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will. It could not abandon its eggs and she couldn't grow wings, so they died together: her body a broken, bent mess and its body crushed beneath hers, its song cut off prematurely. Whip-poor

**Cocytus**

So this was eternity. He wasn't sorry.

And of all the songs the damned could sing, they'd settled for a dull, monotone wailing. It was enough to drive a Windego insane.

Ives could no sooner die than he could live; his body was crushed beneath Boyd's, run through with a rusty bear trap. It might have been seconds ago, or centuries. Even a single breath in the place-between-places lasted all eternity.

He hadn't understood it as a man in the cave, when the truth of his virility splayed out on the walls around him in a twisting series of grotesque, shadowy shapes. He could not die. He could not sleep. He could not eat, though the hunger left his spirit weak. A single bite, a single drop, and he could rise from the ashes to reclaim the night. He could not escape.

But he was not sorry.

Instead, he let his charisma lead. Hello, lovely, I'm so sad to see you here. Your life must have been cut short tragically. Loose my chains and I'll guide you safely to a peaceful place, a place to escape all this wailing…

If you do not set me free I will devour you and all that you hold dear. I'm the devil, and I'm hungry.

You are so annoying. Piss off. Really, piss off. I don't have time to play games.

Beautiful lady, won't you kiss me? A small peck is all my tormented soul needs…

It didn't matter, they couldn't hear him. Everyone here was rendered deaf by the fury of their own low moaning. He wondered, in passing, if he wasn't stuck doing the same. The words used to flow from his mouth like wine and honey, so quickly that he barely knew what he was saying, just that it must be cunning. Always cunning, because he was always hunting.

The others trekked by in vast herds, heading for their final sorting. Ives remained stationary, chained down at the entrance to the underworld like an unwilling sentinel. He hated waiting, but he was not sorry.

When all the world blathered on in an un-ending stream of jumbled-up nonsense, it was easy to tune out the noise and go back to hearing nothing. Nothing, below, was different from nothing, above. Above, nothing meant the breeze, the hum of crickets, the call of night-birds, and the slight crisp of winter to preserve his feast. Below, nothing meant nothing. No sound, no sun, no moon. Nothing to differentiate between the time to come and the time that had already been, except for the miserable plodding of bodies. After a while, even those started to look the same.

The shaman who told him the myth of the Windego certainly forgot to explain a few things. Eating the flesh of his enemies made him strong, fast, and whole again. It stopped him from dying, immediately, but it also stopped him from dying… ever, maybe. When he had no enemies to devour, those he chanced to meet sufficed. It was a building frenzy, all consuming, and the starvation of this in-between-place maddened him.

Or maybe he simply hadn't known everything that eternity entailed for the damned who could not die. Maybe he was still alive, and the hunger had bent his mind. Maybe we was not dead, nor dying, but whole and thriving in his winter's cave, running barefoot in the night. But then.. where were the others of his kind? He could not be the only one, so where were they? Still living, probably. Far north, where it was always cold and night could last for months at a time in a forest that had no ending.

Yes, he was definitely dying.

But he was not sorry. He would never be sorry for living, for eating, for choosing more than mere humanity.

A fine soldier passed within feet of his perch, and he lunged – jaws chomping and face snarling. He bit nothing, missed by less than an inch, but the soldier never flinched. None of them did. They couldn't see him, or they were so wrapped up in that infernal moaning that nothing else mattered.

"Stupid!" he raged at the passing soldier. "Stupid, worthless cunt! Fear me. Feed me. Fuck me. GOD DAMMIT, LOOK AT ME!" No matter how loudly he screamed, his voice never cut through the sound of their wailing.

Ives could see his own blood trickling from his wrists where the chains perpetually bit at his flesh. No matter how he twisted and contorted himself, he knew he couldn't get so much as a single drop of the red nectar to his tongue. He knew, but he tried anyway.

No. He was _not_ sorry.

While free, he had everything. Once chained, he had the memories. To die knowing you'd been – even for one second – a king was no tragedy. A shame that the epics never seemed to see it that way. Even as a chained beast, stranded in the sea of monotony, Ives knew he had not been beat. Death comes for the conquerors eventually, but Death could not conquer him. And, because it could not conquer him, it kept him chained. So this, too, was some sort of victory.

"SHUT UP!" If only he could do something about the wailing…

Every day was the same, so much that it stretched into one long, unwavering day. Until the day something changed. He heard it calling before he saw the shape – a long and mournful melody. Will. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will.

Whippoorwill, he knew it from his old life. Ground birds, solitary. Graceless fliers with gangly bodies and spotty feathers meant to mimic the detritus. A vociferous bird, noisy. Impossible to track by sound, as the sound carried and echoed off of everything. Impossible for any human, but not impossible for Ives. The Windego could track anything, and he knew – in the agonizing hours or seconds that he heard the whippoorwill singing – that the sound was approaching.

Ives smiled, chuckling. The bird was coming for him, his fellow winter thing; a lesser bird might migrate, but the whippoorwill would hibernate. Like him, the whippoorwill hunted by night. The kindred's song set him alight.

Oh no, Ives was not sorry at all.

**Phlegethon**

The thing that fell toward Ives was not the shadow of a whippoorwill slain; its shape was too big, to ungainly. Even a bird prone to riotous spurts of flapping would not plummet without a hawk's great wingspan to save it. Whatever it was, it was crashing – not flying.

It collided with the ground beneath the great arch of the gate – neither within nor without. The drones stepped aside, rather than trample it, and he watched as it trembled, drew breath, and began to rise. The shape looked… human, almost. Except its flesh was tattered, its entire body bloodied and broken. Everything about the heap of matted flesh screamed pain, and the song of the whippoorwill faded.

"Hello?" Ives called to it. He'd never known fear, not in the face of death. Frustration, certainly, and hunger, always, but never fear. This was a creature to fear, though. Finally, a monster whose durability and worthiness exceeded his own.

"H.. hello?" the thing gasped back, staggering to its feet.

It spoke. If it could hear him, it could free him. If it could free him, could it kill him?

"Unbind me," Ives gasped, straining against the chains that kept him pinioned like a baited bear at the very maw of the afterlife. "Help me, and set me free."

"Funny," the thing replied, "I thought that was my line."

It approached, walking like a young foal on legs so broken they should not have borne weight. The sea of faceless, groaning souls parted for it without slowing, and he saw that its shape was, indeed, human. Human, and a woman. Was this the whippoorwill's true shape?

The tribes might see this thing, a bastard of creation like himself, and call it medicine. They personified everything, and while he might not have paid any attention to it as man, as a Windego… there was no denying the existence of supernatural entities. Whatever she was, she could almost certainly be eaten.

Her blue eyes pierced him like knives, and for a second Ives swore he saw an aura of broken, mottled brown wings trailing behind her.

"Set me free, girlie."

"Why?"

It seemed a logical question to Belle: why? The pain didn't really stop hurting in this place, though she knew she'd been falling. Falling in that graceless, weightless kind of way that, for a split second, made everything better. Until she'd crushed her hope, her little voice in the night. That was when she knew she'd been condemned, guilty or not, for the crimes the Clerics prescribed. Maybe that was their power, she wasn't certain. She knew only that she hurt, inside and out, and this chained man was the only thing within sight not wailing and shambling away from the Gate.

That was the sum total of their surroundings: a gate, a man in chains, and a sea of bodies. Of the three, he was undeniably the most interesting. And he looked so… so close, almost right.

"I could protect you, keep you safe?" His words reeked of desperation, something Rumpelstiltskin would have liked. Oh, her dear Rumpelstiltskin… he never came for her, even in those last moments. So what did that make her? A foolish little girl, lost, and in need of rescue. Funny, how little death changed.

"We're dead…" Belle offered, quietly. "And them too, the walkers, they're dead too?"

Ives nodded and strained against his chains, grinding his teeth.

"Will I need protecting, do you think?"

"Almost definitely. They'll come to drag you away soon."

"That's a lie."

"DAMMIT, WOMAN, SET ME LOOSE." The man exploded in a fit of rage, teeth gnashing at her and finding nothing.

Belle considered him. She was broken beyond repair, but he might… he could live, maybe. Wherever he'd been before here, it can't have been so bad if he wasn't relieved. She was, a little. It was better than being flayed alive, as were most things she could imagine. Except, her poor little bird…

"If I let you go," she countered, "you have to promise not to hurt me."

"Fine."

"Swear it by this place. Swear you'll stay here _forever_ if you don't keep your promise to me." The man looked pained.

Ives could feel the magic binding him more tightly than even his chains. If he swore this to her, he'd have to keep it. He wanted to offer her something else, anything else, but he knew the words wouldn't form. He couldn't lie to her, she'd unmasked him in less than the time it took to concoct a convincing horror story. Though _how_ she knew…

"I swear I will not harm you," he choked out, mouth watering. The smell of her open wounds and oozing blood called to him, a siren's song, beckoning. Was this woman his torturer, here to pay him back for the lives he'd taken at long last?

"What's your name?"

"Ives. Colonel Fitzwilliam Ives. Or F. W. Calhoun, if you prefer."

"I'm Belle," the broken thing stated, "and I'm going to hold you to that promise, Ives."

Belle reached a rose-stained hand toward his bindings. They fell away like nothing, and Colonel Francis Ives breathed his first free breath in what felt like an eternity.

"Come on," he growled out. "We're leaving."

"Leaving?"

I'ves' sharp hands pulled her toward the gate, igniting the sores on her arms like fingers of fire licking.

Belle screamed, and pulled against him. He released her the second she began to show her pain, and they fell apart, panting. "We can't leave, Ives. We're dead. We need to go this way," Belle finally choked out, pointing toward the shambling masses.

"No, we need to go this way," Ives snarled. "Look at yourself, and look at them. We're not the same. We are leaving through that gate, right now." He threw himself through the portal, only to meet with an invisible wall. It was impassible.

"Ives…" Belle's voice cracked with heartbreak, "we can't go back."

"How do you know?" he all but sobbed. "How do you know if you won't try?" Ives could barely remember the scent of snow or the stars in the sky. He hadn't known how badly he craved the world above until he heard whippoorwill and saw the thing – Belle – stagger over to him on mangled legs. "Please… please, just try."

How could Belle refuse him? She took his hand, and they stepped through.

The second the pair of them passed under the archway, it was as though they'd opened a floodgate. Ives clutched Belle's broken body to him, certain he would be lost without her, and they raced away in a sickening, reverse-suction of the subtle darkness they felt upon dying. This was rebirth, and it was messy. Their bodies burst forth, whole and healed, onto the ground beside an abandoned riverbank. Ives knew he was healed because his injuries had been nothing; Belle was the real evidence – her flesh was mended, smooth, her limbs straight and strong. Both of them were covered, head to toe bloody.

Belle heard the sound of water running, felt the grassy bank beneath her body, and the song of a distant night-bird calling from far away. She hadn't realized the monotony of the other place, not in the same way she'd felt it in the tower. Had they negotiated for an hour or an eon? And now that they'd come, by some miraculous means, back from the brink of dying, would Ives keep his word?

His gaze met hers, his eyes dark and burning. Ives was looking at her like she was some kind of demi-deity, and not just the means of his deliverance. His hands tore down her arms and back, feeling the smoothness of her nakedness and leaving rivers of fire in her wake. Every nerve and sensation was new, made more vibrant by the slipping lubrication of blood that coated them.

"You're beautiful," he choked out, hands still blazing over her body. She mesmerized him. He couldn't stop touching even if she wanted him to, so he did his best to make sure she'd never ask. And the blood… he was salivating. Surely, just a little taste?

He started with the thick red fluid coating his own lips, devouring every drop until even the faint iron taste faded from his mouth, keeping his hands on the woman in front of him lest she try to fly away. She'd saved him, in every way a person could be saved, and he'd wanted nothing beneath the shadow of the gate as badly as he wanted this.

Belle didn't push him away, so he moved his mouth to her neck and began lapping up the sticky-sweet treat along her skin. It was impossible to know where the joy of hot, liquid blood ended and the subtle sin of her own sweet flesh started. The combination of the two was going to be the death of him.

The tiny woman, who had seemed so much bigger when she stood broken and bludgeoned, began whimpering. She leaned into his mouth, and he knew he was lost. Promise not to hurt her? He'd kill the next ten men who so much as looked at her, and pile up their corpses by her door so she could see that he was a skilled hunter. They'd be his little gifts to her, he wouldn't even nibble. Anything she wanted, just for—

"Ives," Belle asked him, sounding uncertain. "The blood… we died."

"Aye, and now we're alive," he groaned, lapping at the dripping rubies falling from her earlobes. Her hair had soaked it in like a sponge, and now the red after-birth of life rained down on him in a glorious dribbles.

"Wh.. what are you?"

"Windego," he grinned. The word washed over her, lighting fires in her brain, but none connected. There was an inferno lurking in that word, worlds of meaning, but she did not know it.

"What does that mean?"

"I eat people. I eat people to stay alive."

"Are you going to eat me?"

"Well as a matter of fact…" The man's eyes turned lascivious, and he lapped at her neck again, "I was rather looking forward to licking you clean."

Belle looked at him like she was seeing him for the first time, leaned in, and pressed a kiss to his waiting lips. Then she pulled back, abruptly, as though waiting for some unknown reaction to hit.

"I thought, maybe…"

"Kiss me again," Ives moaned. The words tore at her heart and burned up her insides, so she did.

He kissed her back, and slurped the fluid from her skin like a starving man slurping down over-rich gravy, a cat licking clean his cream dish.

The hotness of his mouth felt almost like the scourges on Belle's skin, and she cried out in a mixture of pleasure and pain. This was not her true love. Not at all like Rumpelstiltskin. But Ives was real, he was here, and she wanted him. Lust was a new feeling. She'd felt it sure enough as Rumpelstiltskin's maid, but the Clerics drove that from her memory during their violent purging.

Without pausing and without second-guessing, Ives sheathed himself in Belle's tight, slippery body. Her blood and pain mingled with the blood already coating them, and the old magic slipped another tie between them. A woman's innocence was a powerful gift.

His intrusion was sharp, but not unpleasant, and Bell found she liked the way it hurt. Sore, spreading, filling and gloriously tight. They came together with hard, hurried thrusting, and Belle tore at his skin — desperate to feel alive.

Just as Ives took her nipple into his mouth and began to worry it to firmness with his teeth, she felt the change wash in.

Something deeply evil was calling her, and she knew she didn't have a choice – the magic told her that she was going. Purple. Somehow it was purple, like twilight.

It wasn't fair. She was fading. He smelt it before he saw it, and felt Belle tense. Something wanted her back, wanted to take her away from him.

As the purple fog engulfed her, Belle began to fade from sight. Thinking as fast as he could, Ives crushed her to his mouth for one last kiss – biting down on his own tongue and forcing the blood and severed flesh into her open mouth.

This was his word, his bond. If she swallowed it, he'd be able to find her again – he could already hear the faint notes of her whip-poor-will song.

Then, as suddenly as she'd appeared, his Belle was gone. The blood on his body had begun to turn tacky and hard, unappetizing enough that he thought he'd brave the river to clean himself before beginning the hunt.

Slowly, carefully, he rinsed himself clean. The waters ran red around him, tongues of blood fanning out like flame, and he knew that Belle was not dead. Knew it had not all been an elaborate dream. On his arm, caked under the grime, was a single dun feather – speckled with pinkness that once had been white.

Ives had marked Belle as clearly as she'd marked him, and not even hell could keep him from finding her again.

**Lethe**

The doctors told Irene she was in the ward to forget the fantasies running rampant inside her head. Irene hadn't a creative bone in her body_, _so she couldn't imagine what fantasies they spoke of. Dangerous fantasies, apparently.

Maybe they were right. After all, it was her dearest wish to set the whole place alight and run off into the night.

No one ever came to see her. The nurses changed on a regular rotation, the doctor came by even less frequently, and the small copse of bushes guarding her ground-level window never let in much light. She was alone, entirely, except for the mother whippoorwill roosting on its eggs, pressed up against her window pane.

Irene French never felt crazy, aside from hating her padded prison. But, as she watched the bird and waited for its eggs to hatch, she started to suspect that the doctors and nurses might be on to something. She couldn't remember anything beyond these four walls, though they assured her she had a life and a family who loved her.

Well, if they loved her, why did they stay away?

No, Irene was certain that her life was more intertwined with the whippoorwill nesting outside her window than with any of the people who shared blood with her.

The one thing she could remember, more than anything, was the story of the Whippoorwill and Coyote. Whippoorwill called to the souls of the dead at night, and waited for them to pass at twilight. Whippoorwill sang and sang and guided them to their resting place, only it was ever so hard to follow the shrill, haunting melody in the night. That is where Coyote came. Coyote offered the souls a shortcut to find Whippoorwill's trail again, and then – when they were bruised and bloody – Coyote left them alone at first light. Coyote was jealous, the stories said, because Whippoorwill had the most beautiful voice in the night

Irene thought, if she could do nothing else right, that she could still manage to keep an eye on the little family growing outside her prison cell. Sometimes, if the bird had a particularly vociferous night, she could even hear it calling through the thick glass and cement.

It was just… the babies never came. She'd been quite certain of her sanity, before she started ticking off days with her thumbnail on the dusty windowpane. Hundreds of days. Then thousands. Why didn't the eggs hatch? Nothing ever, ever changed.

Until one day, they did. Seasons started to breathe new life into the world, she could feel the chill take its hold. Winter. Winter was right. She had something to do with the winter, if only…

That was the day the woman came, peeking into her cell with cold, calculating eyes.

Irene had never dared to hope before that day. Never prayed for escape, because it did not occur to her to do so. There was no world beyond the walls and the bird, no people beyond the doctors and her least favorite nurse… except, there were. There was the black-eyed woman. She held on to the memory like a vice, willing herself to remember something vital, something crucial. It never came to her, and as winter continued the whippoorwill slumbered.

She wanted it to fly away in the summer, and escape their mutual torpor.

That day, with the woman, stood out in her memory as the singular most exciting day of her life. And she'd lived many, many days. Close to eight thousand, by her own reckoning, and who knew how many before she'd started counting? Nothing ever changed, but her memories told her that it ought to. Things ought to change.

One day, her whippoorwill started crying before sun-down, and Irene knew that someone was dying. The hospital was in an uproar, feet landed heavily over-head, and the bird would not stop its calling. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will. The entire thing felt surreal and familiar. Then her savior appeared.

"Come with me."

"Who are you, why are you doing this?"

His name was Jefferson, and all she had to do was find a man – a man named Mr. Gold – and pass along a very simple message. The world was growing. All these new people – Mr. Gold, Jefferson, Regina… Irene bid her bird goodbye as it sung its lament in full daylight. Strange bird, really, behaving in a way so contrary to its nature on today of all days.

Irene fled the hospital, taking only what she could carry. The town, the world, was blossoming in front of her, but none of it felt familiar. It didn't help her remember anything.

Mr. Gold's Pawn Shop and Antique Dealer. That's what she was looking for, so she flitted over to the small building and was met by the soft jangle of bells when she opened the door.

"Are you Mr. Gold," she asked the man, unsure. He was supposed to protect her, but he didn't look like much of anything. A man in a suit with a pained look in his face.

Irene's head reeled. His eyes, somehow, looked familiar. Not like anyone she'd known before, but not unlike the kind of intensity she'd always dreamed would find her. Then he hugged her, and his arms felt.. off, slightly. Not quite the right smell, maybe?

Still, she trusted him. He scared her but, on the surface – anyway, he looked right. There weren't many instincts she could call upon, other than the desire to run and hide, but that one would not serve her. Hiding was her life, to date. Today, she was brave.

As he marched her through the woods, the sounds and smells overwhelmed her. She felt at home, amongst the scent of young soil and old trees, cloaked in a blanket of chirping birds and rustling leaves. She felt like a wild thing.

Then, as the breeze shifted and they neared the end of her climb a thought came, unbidden, to her head. Then another.

"Wait."

She remembered.

**Styx**

Gold had never loathed another living being so thoroughly as he loathed this faceless, half-named thing. Hatred. Cold, simple, and unchanging.

It was in her voice, bound up with all his hopes and regrets: "Ives, wait! I remember."

"Oh, dearie? And who's that?"

"I… you're not Ives."

"No."

"You're… are you Rumpelstiltskin?"

"Right again. So tell me, dearie, did you wait a whole week before you left to find a new man, or was it two for common decency?" Rumpelstiltskin was positively seething.

"I… you didn't hear what happened?"

"You _died,_" he nearly sobbed. "I thought you were dead."

"I did die," Irene – no, Belle – confessed. "I don't know where I was before the purple smoke came for me."

"But we know who you were with, don't we? I knew you could never love me." He was advancing on her quickly, closing the space between them with a sort of growing malice that spoke of centuries of hurt and loneliness.

"She was with me," came a feral snarl from not more than ten paces away. Gold whipped around and came face to face with the creature, a monster new to their lands – but still a monster. He looked the thing in the eye and nearly dropped his cane.

It was himself. The face was the same.

"Belle," growled the beast, wilder by half than Rumpelstiltskin had ever been. "I've been waiting, circling for nearly three decades." He nuzzled her neck with his face. "Smelled you in the air. When I heard the bird I knew I'd find you today. What does this _human_ want with you?"

"Ives," Belle gasped, petting his sweat-drenched head. The curse was broken, truly enough, but what had it cost him to push his way into Storybrooke and meet them? "This is Rumpelstiltskin. I love him," she confessed, looking sharply at Gold, then back again. "Please don't kill him."

Oh yes, thought Gold. This was real hatred. Regina would pay. Whatever brought them here, to this point today, he was taking it out of the Evil Queen in milky-white flesh and pain.

Gold's eyes met the monster's – Ives – and he thought, somewhat bemusedly, that the two of them might find a bit of common ground with respect to Madam Mayor.

Somewhere in the background a bird was calling, the whip-snippet of its song carrying. Gold turned his back on the monster nuzzling his maid. He knew that want, that burning need. Belle must have exactly what she wanted, do exactly as she pleased. At least until the magic was released. Then, if he had the power, they would see.

"Come with me," he ordered, and he thought he heard Ives lunge for him.

"Don't!" Belle admonished, and by the rustling of clothes it sounded like she'd grasped him by the sleeve.

"We're bringing the magic back, dearie," offered Gold by way of an explanation. "And then you and I are going to have a very interesting chat about the stories Regina's been telling."

"You're not taking her," challenged Ives, wrapping her up in his arms more tightly. "She's mine."

Gold wanted to kill the hungry-looking, half-starved imposter and be done with it, but he recognized his fellow wild thing. Maybe as the Dark One he could… no, those days were behind him. He had to find Bae. Whether Belle wanted him or not, he had to find his son.

Without further delay, Gold tossed the vial of True Love into the Wishing Well. As for the rest… only time would tell.

_Fin._


End file.
